Banda (opera)

In opera, a banda (Italian for band) refers to a musical ensemble (normally of wind instruments) which is used in addition to the main orchestra and plays the music which is actually heard by the characters in the opera. A banda sul palco (band on the stage) was prominently used in Rossini's Neapolitan operas. Verdi used the term banda to refer to a banda sul palco, as in the score for Rigoletto. He used the term banda interna (internal band), to refer to a band which is still separate from the orchestra but heard from the off-stage wings. The early scores of La traviata use a banda interna.

Diegetic depictions of music making are present in the earliest operatic depictions of Orpheus accompanying himself but larger onstage ensembles seem to have first appeared in Don Giovanni, most spectacularly in the polymetric Act I ball where the wind Harmonie is joined by two violin-and-bass bands to simultaneously accompany minuet, contradance and waltz. Giovanni Paisiello's opera Pirro, which opened weeks later in December 1787, marks the first use of the term banda in the sense of a wind band. While Almaviva's serenade is accompanied from the pit in both Paisiello's (1782) and Rossini's (1816) Il barbiere di Siviglia, by 1818 Rossini's opera Ricciardo e Zoraide the banda was established as an independent institution in Italian opera houses.

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